A week long hearing exploring the extent of illegal UK government surveillance operations has ended with Amnesty International lambasting the government for making it descend into “the realms of farce and fantasy.”

“It is a lightning
strike on the privacy of everyone within the government's ever
extending reach,” said Amnesty International's Senior
Director for Law and Policy, Michael Bochenek, on Friday.

“This week's hearing descended at times into the realms of
farce and fantasy – thanks to the government's insistence they
would neither confirm nor deny any of their surveillance
activities.”

The hearing has been exploring the allegations that the UK has
been illegally intercepting millions of communications.

A GCHQ tribunal started to hear the legal challenges from Amnesty
International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Privacy
International and Liberty among others on Monday.

“This week’s hearing will be the first time that these UK
government agencies, including the notoriously shady GCHQ, have
appeared in a public hearing to answer direct allegations and
state their position on the mass surveillance operations as a
whole,” said Amnesty International in a statement at the
beginning of the week.

However, any hope about the UK government being able to clarify
their involvement in mass surveillance operations has quickly
dissipated.

“Without being able to deal with concrete examples,
discussing the lawfulness of mass surveillance became an exercise
in absurdity. We were pursuing our challenge in a legal black
hole,” Bochenek said.

The criticism was bolstered by the UK government’s apparent
rushing through a new surveillance law that went from
announcement to enactment in eight days.

The controversial data retention and investigatory powers bill
(DRIP) gives British security services access to an unprecedented
level of metadata, including records of phone calls, emails and
social media activity and would also force non-UK companies like
Yahoo and Facebook to hold information on web activities if their
users are based in Britain.

Labour MP Tom Watson called it “democratic banditry, resonant of
a rogue state.”

Amnesty also expressed distaste.

“The government has tried to cajole the public into believing
the law is just a minor tweak to protect existing powers. They
claim it doesn't need proper scrutiny by their elected
representatives, but this is in fact an unjustifiable power grab
by the security services,” said Bochenek.

“Not only does it extend the government's dragnet well beyond
UK shores to permit virtually limitless fishing expeditions, but
it appears to be an attempt to give a lawful basis to unlawful
government activity, before anyone has time to realize what's
happened.”

“It is a lightning strike on the privacy of everyone within
the government's ever extending reach.”